Note XI-120 — Chapter XI · GODS, SUPERNATURAL BEINGS, AND WORSHIP.

'This suggestion was first publicly made in a communication read,' says Squier, Serpent Symbol, p. 49, 'before the American Ethnological Society, by a distinguished member of that body; from which the following passages are extracted. After noticing several facts tending to show the former existence of Phallic worship in America, the author of the paper proceeds as follows:—"We come now to Central America. Upon a perusal of the first journey of our fellow-members, Messrs. Stephens and Catherwood, into Guatemala and the central territories of the Continent, I was forcibly struck with the monolithic idols of Copan. We knew nothing before, save of Mexican, Palenque, and Uxmal remains; and those of Copan appeared to me to be unlike them all, and probably of an older date. My reading furnishes me with but one parallel to those singular monolithic sculptures, and that was seen in Ceylon, in 1796, by Captain Colin McKenzie, and described in the 6th volume of the Asiatic Researches. As the description is short, I transcribe it: 'The figure is cut out of stone in relievo; but the whole is sunk in a hollow, scooped out, so that it is defended from injury on the sides. It may be about fourteen feet high, the countenance wild, a full round visage, the eyes large, the nose round and long; it has no beard; nor the usual distinguishing marks of the Gentoo casts. He holds up both his hands, with the forefingers and thumbs bent; the head-dress is high, and seems ornamented with jewels; on the little finger of the left hand is a ring; on the arms bracelets; a belt high about the waist; the lower dress or drapery fixed with a girdle much lower than the Gentoo dress, from which something like tassels depend; a collar and ornaments on the neck and shoulders; and rings seem to hang low from the ears. No appearance of any arms or weapons.' This was the nearest approximation I could make to the Copan idols; for idols I took them to be, from the fact that an altar was invariably placed before them. From a close inspection of Mr. Catherwood's drawings, I found that though no single figure presented all the foregoing characteristics, yet in the various figures I could find every particular enumerated in the Ceylon sculpture. It then occurred to me that one of the most usual symbols of the Phallus was an erect stone, often in its rough state, sometimes sculptured, and that no other object of heathen worship was so often shadowed forth by a single stone placed on end, as the Phallus. That the worship of the Priapus, [Lingam] existed in Ceylon, has long since been satisfactorily established; and hence I was led to suspect that these monuments at Copan, might be vestiges of a similar idolatry. A further inspection confirmed my suspicions; for, as I supposed, I found sculptured on the American ruins the organs of generation, and on the back of one of the emblems relative to uterine existence, parturition, etc. I should, however, have wanted entire confidence in the correctness of my suspicions, had the matter rested here. On the return of Messrs. Stephens and Catherwood from their second expedition, every doubt of the existence of Phallic worship, especially in Yucatan, was removed."